15° Edition – 2012, May

Presentation

Welcome to Sarzana, a wonderful and historical city in the east part of the Liguria Region, very close to the sea.
You will enjoy the 15th edition of the Acoustic Guitar Meeting in one of the most beautiful location in Italy, the Firmafede Fortress, a very large fortified castle of XV century. Guitars, luthiers, guitar makers, artists have a special flavour in this beautiful location and you’ll spend 5 wonderful days and have a lot of fun!

Alessio Ambrosi
President of the Ass. Cult. “Armadillo Club”, Artistic Director
Hotels and accomodations at special price for exhibitors and visitors info Hotels

“LUTHERIE and GUITAR DIDACTIC COURSES”

May 23rd-24th-25th, from 9am to 6:30pm., seminars on May 26th.
Roy McAlister, Jean Larrivée, Rick Davis, Cat Fox, John Thomas, Rosalba De Bonis will lead lutherie course and seminars.
Davide Mastrangelo, Bob Brozman, Angelo Tordini will lead acoustic guitar didactics course and seminars.
Details of the program and subscription information on info-program
“New Sounds of Acoustic Music”, 2012 CARISCH Award, contest for young guitarists, May 24th, h. 7p.m. info

Exhibition of lutherie, import, vintage, accessories and publishing for the acoustic guitar, CD, DVD, Viniles, May 25th-26th-27th info for exhibitors

“Ri…SONANZE”

Historic Guitars Show, from Antonio Stradivari to C.F. Martin: the guitar and its evolution through the centuries – by Leo Petrucci and Franco Di Filippo

Courses and seminar venue: FORTEZZA FIRMAFEDE – SARZANA (SP) ITALY during the ACOUSTIC GUITAR MEETING, 15th edition.
The entire Meeting will be held from May 23rd to May 27th. Along with the workshops there will also be the Luthiers, Import, Acoustic Guitar Accessories Exhibition and concerts with the best international performers.

Courses and Seminar Program

Acoustic Guitar Handcrafting Techniques

Illustration, demonstration, use of multimedia material, group practice

Wednesday May 23rd – Thursday May 24th – Friday May 25th
from 10am to 1pm, Master Luthier ROY MC ALISTER
“DESIGN AND BUILD YOUR OWN ORIGINAL GUITAR MODEL”
•Learn how to design and develop your guitar for specific purposes and applications.
•Learn the structural engineering as well as the voicing needed to develop an original guitar.
•It will be discussed aesthetic and ergonomic preferences, layout and bracing placement.
•Learn the easiest way to create your own jigs and templates to “prototype your design with minimal financial investment.
•It will showed each step needed to design, engineer and develop your design then walk you through every building step, finish and set-up to the final playable instrument.
•It will be used photos of the entire process created and built in McAlister’s shop.
The finished guitar will be on display in Sarzana during all the Acoustic Guitar Meeting.
During the week of The Acoustic Guitar Meeting in Sarzana, this guitar will be raffled to raise funds for victims of the 2011 Floods will be raffled to raise funds for the victims of the 2011 Liguria floods.
On Sunday, the final day of the festival, I will present this guitar to the winner of the raffle.

from 3pm to 5pm, Master Luthier JEAN LARRIVEE
“THE HISTORY AND THE EXPERIENCE OF A GREAT MASTER LUTHIER”
The first day will be about how Larrivée builds guitars and the unique bracing and also shapes of all the pieces and how it affects the tone.
The second day it will be discussed the wood and how Larrivée goes about finding it, travelling all over to find it and to select every single piece by handpicking personally.
The third day Larrivée will talk about marketing and many other things such as Fish and Wildlife and Lacey act and how it affects the manufacturers. It will be discussed why he does not use pearl on the Canadian made guitar, also touch on the matter of running a family guitar business.

Wednesday May 23rd – Thursday May 24th
from 5pm to 6pm, Master Luthiers CAT FOX and RICK DAVIS
•When Luthiers Go Bad: A repair tech looks at common (and not-so-common) lutherie mistakes.
•Steel-string set up and maintenance.
•Modern evolution of the steel-string guitar.
•Tone production in the steel-string guitar — the soundboard.

Friday May 25th
from 5pm to 6pm, JOHN THOMAS, journalist from “Fretboard Journal”
John Thomas’s talk will cover the history, background, and ins and outs of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and related laws like the US Lacey Act and EU regulation, “Obligations of Operators who Place Timber and Timber Products on the Market.” He’ll present specific examples, supply common forms necessary for importing and exporting musical instruments, and answer your questions. For some background reading, he recommends his article in Fretboard Journal: A Guitar Lover’s Guide to the CITES Conservation Treaty, An updated look at how the CITES treaty affects musical instrument collectors.

Saturday May 26th
from 3pm to 5pm: SEMINAR/CONFERENCE “The Chitarra Battente from past to present” , with FRANCESCO LOCCISANO (musician, the best chitarra battente player in Italy), ROSALBA DE BONIS (luthier, from the historical De Bonis family, over the years the best chitarra battente makers in Calabria, Italy), BOB BROZMAN (musician, best string instruments player, ethnomusicologist)

Acoustic Guitar Playing Techniques

Lessons will include group practice in class on instruments and anthological pieces given for home study

Wednesday May 23rd – Thursday May 24th – Friday May 25th
from 10 to 11:30am and from 3 to 4pm, Master DAVID MASTRANGELO
” BASIC AND ADVANCED TECHNIQUES FOR THE ACOUSTIC GUITAR”
Adaptation for solo acoustic guitar and polyphonic improvisation (part I)
•Choice of tonality
•CAGED guitar system as a basis for polyphonic improvisation
•Improvisation with rhythmic support (obstinate bass, alternating, etc.)
Adaptation for solo acoustic guitar and polyphonic improvisation (part 2)
•Melodic variations
•Harmonic substitutions
•Construction and use of licks
Adaptation for solo acoustic guitar and polyphonic improvisation (part 3)
•Examples in various styles
•Exercises in class

from 11:30am to 1pm and from 4 to 5pm, Master BOB BROZMAN
“RHYTHM AND TECHNIQUES FOR ACOUSTIC GUITAR- HAWAIIAN LAP STEEL – BLUES FROM THE WORLD ”
•Studies on rhythm using hands, feet and voice. Conveying the techniques on to the guitar
•How to relate muscle movements to emotions
•Exploration of open tunings
•Slide techniques with bottleneck for a good sound with the acoustic guitar; riffs and feeling
•Slide techniques for the Hawaiian lap steel
•From delta blues to world music
•New ways of rhythm and improvisation with more “groove” and expression
•New ideas for arrangement to communicate the beauty of the guitar sound
•Individual and group exercises

from 5 to 6pm
OPEN MIC of the students, with comments and personal advices by the teachers.

Teachers

ROY MC ALISTERMaster luthier ROY Mc ALISTER has played the guitar for about 30 years and has worked as a carpenter for 25; these two passions came together which led him to become one of the most quoted American Luthiers. At the end of the 1970’s until nearly the end of the 80’s he studied with David Powell, Wendell Castle, Bruce Hoadley and others. Roy achieved his potential when he met Richard Hoover of Santa Cruz Guitar Co. He started to work at SCGC and began his carrear becoming responsible for “top voice” and collaborated with the research and development for new and custom models; in autumn 1997 he left Santa Cruz to start his freelance career and established his own logo. Roy now makes about 20/25 guitars a year and the current back order is 3 years; his guitars are very expensive, risults of large research and the choice of the best timber on the market. He is Luthier for many famous artists such as David Crosby, Jackie Browne, Rick Ruskin and many others. From Califonia (Watsonville), where an earthquake destroyed his laboratory and home, he moved to Gig Harbour in the state of Washington. His most requested models are the Concert (Crosby model) and the Slope D12 frets that Jackson Browne renamed Roy Smeck Alister seen that it was made from a copy of his Gibson Roy Smeck year 1930. At Healdsburg this year, he presented a replica of the 028 prewar and had so much success that Roy decided to produce a Vintage line (Nick Lucas, Roy Smeck, 028, 0045 etc.) www.mcalisterguitars.com

JEAN LARRIVEE began his career as a guitar pupil of Robert Neveu at the Royal Conservatory of Music and he apprenticed as a guitar builder intermittently during the mid-1960s with Edgar Münch, a German builder then living in Toronto. Larrivée also worked in New York with Manuel Valasquez before opening his own studio in Toronto in 1968. His production reached about 30 instruments a year at this time. After guidance from Matt Umanov in New York, he began making steel-string instruments in 1970, modifying the Martin design. In 1977 Larrivée moved to Victoria, BC, establishing a workshop which by 1979 had 16 workers and an annual production of 1000 guitars. He relocated the company, Jean Larrivée Guitar Ltd, in North Vancouver in 1982, and subsequently produced steel-string guitars (in several body shapes and sizes) in the main, but also double basses. In 2001 Larrivée opened a second factory in Oxnard, California, where he oversees the production of gloss finish acoustic guitars. His son, John Larrivée Jr., manages the Vancouver plant which produces the satin finish instruments. Among Larrivée’s early apprentices were Sergei DeJonge, George Gray, Grit Laskin, Linda Manzer, and David Wren sviluppare competenze musicali di riparazione e costruzione di strumenti mentre studiava Art & Design nella tarda adolescenza, sulla scia di un ricordo d’infanzia: un mandolino napoletano utilizzato come un giocattolo per scavare nel suo box di sabbia. Ispirato da un liutaio locale e con limitate io il mondo e osannati come gioielli di alta liuteria. www.larrivee.com

CAT FOXgraduated from the lutherie program at the Minnesota Technical College, Red Wing MN, in 1982. Following that she apprenticed with William Cumpiano (author, Guitarbuilding: Tradition & Technology), building and repairing guitars in his shop for two years. She stayed on after the apprenticeship and served as Cumpiano’s repair technician for another four years.
In 1989 Cat moved to Seattle and opened up Sound Guitar Repair. She have repaired and restored a variety of fretted instruments ever since, serving an ever-expanding populace of happy musicians. She have done repair, set-up and maintenance work for the Everly Brothers, Bill Frisell, John Gorka, Danny O’Keefe, Annie Wilson of Heart, Cris Williamson, Del Rey and many other players.
Over the years Cat has trained five apprentices, presented at luthiers’ symposia and conventions, taught at the Crucible in San Francisco and at Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix and contributed to Guitarmaker, a professional journal for luthiers. www.catfox.com

RICK DAVIS
after 15 years of building, has produced over 160 guitars for clients throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. All reflect his profound respect for lutherie tradition and his studied, empirical approach to guitar building. Rick served as the Executive Director of the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans (ASIA) and was the editor of Guitar Maker magazine from 1999 to 2005. He has been an exhibitor at the Healdsburg, Newport, and Montreal guitar shows, and has been featured in several books about contemporary luthier-built instruments. Rick’s work is the centerpiece of Tim Brookes’ 2005 book, Guitar: An American Life. He moved to Seattle in 2006 to create a shared shop and lutherie center with wife Cat. www.vtguitars.com

JOHN THOMASis a law professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law in Connecticut, a freelance writer, and a fingerpicker. He teaches international law, intellectual property law, health law, bioethics, and civil procedure. He has published widely on topics such as health policy, politics, juvenile justice, mental health treatment, international law, and, of course, guitars and guitar players. He is currently completing a book about the women who built Gibson’s classic World War II guitars, Banner Gibsons: The Story of the Flattop Guitars of 1942-1945 and the Extraordinary Women (and a Few Men) Who Built Them (Michigan State University Press). As a guitarist, he says, “I still aspire to mediocrity.”www.abajournal.com/mobile/article/

ROSALBA DE BONIS
lives in Bisignano (Cosenza) and works in her father’s laboratory located in Via Giudeca. She began working in 1999, closely following her uncle Maestro Vincenzo duringconstruction at his workshop,a few steps from her own, she then decided to complete her studies at the International School of Lutherie “Antonio Stradivari” in Cremona, while at the same time working as a student at a laboratory in the city centre, but her roots in Cremona are strong, so she decided to return to the laboratory where she currently works and has produced various instruments, in particular “chitarre battenti”, using only the precious and antique method used by the De Bonis family. www.liuteriadebonis.com

DAVIDE MASTRANGELO

is the founder and director of the Fingerstyle Centre of Study in Bibbiena (Arezzo) and for many years teacher at the LIZARD Guitar Academy in Fiesole. Together with Giovanni Untenberger he has written the two volumes of “ Scuola di Chitarra Acustica” (published by BMG/Ricordi) and after that he pubblished many other guitar didactic books, edited by Carisch. He holds guitar methodology workshops regularly throughout Italy and is considered as a landmark figure for the young Italian guitar students in the performance preparation stage. He is an assiduous collaborator of the methodology initiatives presented by the Associazione Culturale “Armadillo Club” and the Didactics Coordinator at the Acoustic Guitar

BOB BROZMAN
has been defined as “The King of National Guitar”, the greatest worldwide player of resophonic guitars and is celebrated for his extraordinary ethnic mix of Blues, African, Hawaiian, Caribbean, and Asian cultures. As a guitarist with unlimited ability, he is constantly on the road in concert: a master of blues slide playing technique and hot jazz. As ethnomusicologist, he has dedicated his studies to various musical cultures throughout the world and achieved popular and critical acclaim through appearances on the radio, television and at several universities where he has been appointed as adjunct Professor and fulfilled other roles in the field of research. Since his first solo album in 1981, he has recorded over 30 CDs, solo projects and collaborations with world wide musicians. His virtuosity as a musician is especially expressed through the use of the bottleneck and the steel bar on the resophonic and the Hawaiian lap-steel guitar. All of this will be the topic of his seminars, as well as other in-depth discussions on the surprising and fascinating study of the mechanics of the human body applied to rhythmic creation in his music. www.bobbrozman.com

TUTOR AND COORDINATOR

ALESSIO AMBROSI is the President of the Associazione Culturale “Armadillo Club” in Sarzana, Italy, and has operated in the organization of high quality musical events for several years. He is the creator and the artistic director of the Acoustic Guitar International Meeting in Sarzana, the most important event in the sector in Italy and one of the most widely recognized abroad, which will be hosting this year’s workshops and seminars. With several years of experience as a guitarist and as promoter of the festival for the acoustic guitar, he continues to support the growth of the knowledge and appreciation of this instrument both in the fields of composition as well as the field of the art of guitar making.www.armadilloclub.org

WORKSHOPS-VARIOUS EVENTS

Shows, Seminars, Conferences by “ARMADILLO CLUB”

“Ri…SONANZE”
Historic Guitars Show, from Antonio Stradivari to C.F. Martin: the guitar and its evolution through the centuries – by Leo Petrucci and Franco Di Filippo

by FRANCESCO LOCCISANO (musician, the best chitarra battente player in Italy), ROSALBA DE BONIS (luthier, from the historical De Bonis family, the famous luthiers from Calabria, Italy, BOB BROZMAN (musician and ethnomusicologist)

Sunday May 27th, h.12am: Conference “THE ACOUSTIC GUITAR IN ITALY”

The conferences will be held in the Sala delle Capriate, Tower Area of the Fortress, 2nd floor

Seminars by “CENTRO STUDI FINGERSTYLE”

The Centro Studi Fingerstyle in Arezzo, by the coordination of M.° Davide Mastrangelo, will lead seminars and meetings with the best acoustic guitar teachers.
Conference about Acoustic Guitar Didactics on Saturday May 26, at 5pm in the Sala delle Capriate, Tower Area of the Fortress, 2nd floor.

Seminars and Meetings by ATKINS-DADI’ GUITAR PLAYERS ASSOCIATION OF ITALY

Open Mic and events by Fingerpicking.net

Fingerpicking.net, the web-site community of acoustic guitar lovers, will confirm its presence in the Meeting with various activities. In the past years their stand has been full of musical sessions, performance, presentation of CDs and books, always with a great success.
They will coordinate a stage, in the Tower area, where many of the best acoustic guitar players in Italy will perform according with a schedule presented by Giovanni Pelosi :

The stage in the Tower area will be coordinate by the Fingerpicking.net community. The stage on the 2nd floor of the Tower area will be at disposal of luthiers, guitarmakers, companies to demonstrate instruments and accessories by their endorsers.

DEMO AND EVENTS ON THE CENTRAL STAGE

The central stage in the main courtyard of the Fortress will present demo-concerts on Saturday May 26th

Exhibition of CDs, DVDs, Viniles, Collection Rarities, Publishing
A special section of the Exhibition will be dedicated to these objects, enlarging the area and the arguments of the Meeting and giving more opportunities to the visitors.
This area will be open also during the main concerts from 9p.m. to 12p.m.

Free market for selling/buying used guitars
A special area, around the Tower, will be at disposal for changing/selling/buying used guitars:

Come to Sarzana with your guitar, you can play, change, sell it or buy a new one!

“HEINEKEN MEETING POINT” Bar-Restaurant
Heineken is the official beer at the Acoustic Guitar Meeting

Welcome concerts and performances in the streets of the historical center of Sarzana :